The revelation that former land ministers in Vanuatu have issued dozens of offshore seabed mining exploration licences without consultation is causing a stir in the Pacific.

Transcript

The revelation that former land ministers in Vanuatu have issued dozens of offshore seabed mining exploration licences without consultation is causing a stir in the Pacific.

But seabed mining company Nautilus Minerals says it is confident that the licences it has been issued are valid.

Cassandra Mason reports:

The recently installed lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, revealed 148 licences have been issued over the past five years. He says the licences were never approved by the Council of Ministers or parliament.

RALPH REGENVANU: Up to date it's been basically hidden from the public, the fact that all these licences have been issued by the minister of lands over the last five years or so. What the ministry wants now is to take a new approach which is, there must be wide public consultation on any further issues to do with seabed mineral exploration.

The Vanuatu government has since applied the so-called precautionary principle and will not allow any seabed mining until the full environmental impacts are understood. Mr Regenvanu says almost all the licences were issued to two companies - Bismarck Mining Corporation and Nautilus Minerals. But the vice president of exploration at Nautilus, Jonathan Lowe, says the company has no doubt their licences are valid.

JONATHAN LOWE: Nautilus is confident about the Vanuatu authorities following due process with respect to our applications. Obviously I can't speak to those of our competitors or what the minister does or doesn't know about his new portfolio.

He says Nautilus submitted renewals for the applications two weeks ago, and that departmental authorities in Vanuatu were accommodating and aware of what the due process was. Yet opposition on the ground in Vanuatu is still widespread. An executive member of the Council of Churches, Alan Nafuki, says the council is against all experimental sea-bed mining. He says the government's decision to grant licences to foreign companies without informing the local people came as a surprise.

ALAN NAFUKI: We need to be told about what would happen if they mine our sea. I mean, the sea is our livelihood. We need to know and we need to have a say in this before anything is done.

Mr Nafuki says there are other ways to generate income rather than deep sea mining. Meanwhile, news of the moratorium is having impact elsewhere. Community groups in Papua New Guinea are now urging their government to follow suit and impose the precautionary principle there. John Chitoa from the Bismarck Ramu Group says there is strong opposition to experimental seabed mining in PNG, where the local people don't want to be used as project guinea pigs.

JOHN CHITOA: There are a lot of unknown questions that needs to be understood by the people. So the people don't want to go blindly into this project.

Mr Lowe says there is no reason for a moratorium in Papua New Guinea, where he says Nautilus has done extensive environmental impact testing over the last decade. Mr Regenvanu says he is now seeking legal advice on whether the licences for Vanuatu are valid. He says only one of the licences was gazetted and there could be legal grounds to put a stop to the rest.